Life is full of fascinating choices. These choices will shape your future. One of my favorite groups, Anberlin, has a song called "The Unwinding Cable Car", which begins with these words:
"Emotive unstable you're like an unwinding cable car...
Listening for voices, but it's the choices that make us who we are..."
Did you catch that last phrase, "it's the choices that make us who we are." How true. Choices of where to go to school, what to do with your life professionally, and whom to marry are all choices which will affect us for a lifetime. The choice of a spouse is particularly important. The person you will choose or have chosen to marry is a person whom will affect every area of your life. Therefore, it's a choice that has to be made wisely.
However, the greatest choice we make in life is in regard to our relationship to Jesus Christ. "Will I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior?" is a choice that each and every person will make. Interestingly, it has many connections within it to marriage.
The Gospel message which Jesus and the apostles proclaimed was that of dicotomy, an oxymoron if you will. The Gospel begs us to seek that which in life is worth dying for and then instead choose to life for it. Now, in regard to Jesus Himself, Christ calls us to lay down our own life in order that by doing so we may obtain Eternal Life through Him. This is extremely odd and seemingly contradictory when you stop and think about it. It is only through "death" that we obtain "life". If we want "Him" we must sacrifice "ourself". We must die to ourselves, our selfish wants, wishes, and desires, and instead choose to live for Christ. This truth of the Gospel message itself is proclaimed throughout Scripture and often spoken about.
What is less understood is the connections between the Gospel and Marriage. Just as the Gospel calls us to seek something in life worth dying for, marriage calls us to seek something in life worth dying for. Just as the Gospel calls us to sacrifice our life for someone (Christ), marriage calls us to sacrifice our life for someone (our spouse). In Ephesians 5, the apostle Paul wrote that wives are to be "subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord" (Eph 5:22) and that husbands are to "love your wives, just as Chirst also loved the church and gave Himself up for her" (Eph 5:25-27).
With this in mind, it becomes clear why the relationship between Christ and the Church is so often portrayed as that of a husband and wife (Eph 5:32, Rev 9:7-10, etc.) Marriage demands that we die to ourself. It requires us to put the needs of another first. It forces us to examine our motives and challenges us to see that true life in marriage is found through self-less sacrifice and acts of love toward another.
The same is true in Christianity. Jesus Christ has called us to die to ourselves. Paul (Rom 8:4-13; 1 Cor 15:31; Gal 5:16; Gal 2:20; Col 3:2-3) and Peter (1 Pet 2:24) stated the same. Eternal life is given as a reward (Jn 3:16; John 10:28; John 11:26). Success in marriage is found in exactly the same way: death to self.
May it be that in each Christian marriage the mystery of the Gospel is revealed (Eph 5:32) and Christ is proclaimed in order that seekers see clearly that in life just as in marriage we must find that which is worth dying for and then choose instead to live for it.
Joshua
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